Why It Pays To Travel In Autumn

Why it pays to travel in autumn On an empty Spanish beach, Nick Trend revels in his autumn holiday - no crowds, low prices and free sunshine

SOMETHING'S not right. It is 10.30 in the morning and I am sitting in the seafront cafe at Calella de Palafrugell, one of the prettiest of a string of small resorts along this rugged stretch of the Costa Brava. My guidebook, now

discarded on the table next to a half-finished caf? cortado, suggests that the shelf of pinky-yellow sand stretched between the promenade and a scattering of low granite outcrops should be packed with people. In fact it is half

empty.

A pair of English girls have just stretched out on blue and chanel outletyellow towels. Twenty yards farther on, a couple are introducing their two-year-old to the clear warm

water.

A woman of about 50 - French, I think - is stepping off the boardwalk to join them, the back of her legs mottled pink and white by a wicker cafe seat. In all, I count about two dozen people on the sand. There are more beached

fishing boats than sunbathers.

Why? After all, the weather is wonderful, the temperature is in the mid-70s, the cloudless sky is luminous blue and I have already retreated into the shade to write. And this isn't an "airport day" lull, when one lot of

holidaymakers leaves and the next arrives. It is just mid-September - and the rest of Europe has decided that the holiday season is over.

The weird thing is that only 19 days previously it was a completely different story. Beaches were packed, sun-loungers were draped with towels from first light, and sights such as the classical ruins at Empuries were inundated

with trippers. In the evenings at Calella de Palafrugell, you would have to eat early, book well in advance or wander long and hungrily down the promenade in search of a free table.

Then, overnight the whole character of Calella, of the Costa Brava, of most other Mediterranean resorts, changed. "It happens on August 31 every year," says Sandie Jones, a local resort manager for a British tour operator.

"You can sit and watch them all loading up their cars or coaches and simply driving out of town. The next morning you notice the difference immediately. Suddenly, it's possible to find a parking space again."

It is only the Italians, Spanish (and on the Greek islands, the Greeksair max shoes themselves) who work to such a precise timetable. But by the end of

the first week of September, says Jones, nearly all the British, Dutch, Scandinavian and German families have gone home, bound by school holidays. And by the middle of the month the young clubbers - the 18-30 crowd -

have also left. Only couples and very young families remain, and peace descends on all but the biggest resorts.

We all know, of course, that once the school holidays are over, the crowds die away and it is a good time for a quiet break. But how many of us know just how good it is?

I had not fully appreciated it myself until this month. Then my son started school and I began to realise what we as a family would be missing by having to synchronise our holidays with those of his classmates. Totting up the

figures is a depressing exercise. The effect on prices as demand suddenly drops off at the end of August is immediate. Travel-industry people call this the "shoulder season", the halfway stage between the peak summer rates

and the rock-bottom off-season bargains.